In spite of the latest school funding study, legislators
should avoid the temptation to scrap or radically alter the
state’s current formula for aid to local school districts.
The study, unveiled on Friday, made headlines with the
interpretation that roughly $2 billion in new money would
be needed to bring Kansas students in line with national
performance standards in math and reading ‒ over four
years, or more. The study, ordered by Republican leaders,
was crafted by a Texas A&M professor and an expert from
a consulting firm with experience in the field. There will
be quibbling over this report and its numbers, but the message
remains: Of late, the legislature has forsaken local
schools.
The Kansas Supreme Court ruled last October that the
state’s schools remained unconstitutionally underfunded,
and hinted strongly that much more money for schools
would be needed. The Court gave lawmakers until the
end of April to submit their plan. The Legislature last year
allocated a $300 million increase in state aid, which has
been seen as a start. Still more, as the study has indicated,
is needed.
Before lawmakers fall into complete hysteria over all
the dollars involved, several things should be remembered.
Among them:
‒ An extra billion or $2 billion for local public schools
should surprise no one who’s given thought to the economic
tsunami of the Brownback years, its frontal assaults
on teaching, on students, on local budgets and tax levies,
its suffocation of all progress achieved in the late ‘ought’s,
when the Supreme Court had approved legislators’ funding
plans for local schools. All that began to change in 2011.
‒ That ten-digit price tag is a lesson in what happens
when a demagogic governor and his political lackeys
decide to loot the treasury, raid state agencies, decimate
government services and drive out experienced public
servants, all to comfort their fat and happy friends and
campaign donors.
‒ Against the broad backdrop of history, it takes only
a moment to wreck what took decades to accomplish. In
this case, historic school finance reforms in 1992 were the
product of nearly four years of toil: innumerable studies
and legislative drafts; long and often grinding hearings,
some of them moved from the Statehouse to the Topeka
Expo Centre to accommodate massive attendance; the
delicate crafting that produced lasting compromise; and
bringing it all into law through sweat-stained legislative
sessions, including three agonizing dead ends leading to
1992.
‒ Last year’s step toward enlightened policy, and the
taxes that helped to finance that $300 million infusion,
have been mis-labeled as “increases.” This is rank delusion.
During the Brownback era, base state aid per pupil
was cut from $4,400 to $3,800. Aid to local option budgets,
to capital improvements and transportation, among
other funds, evaporated.
The new funds allocated last year and the taxes to
finance them are a step toward recovery; they are not a tax
“increase.”
Meanwhile, legislators should respect the state’s current
school funding formula. It has usually needed tinkering
from time to time to account for changes in local economies,
or enrollments, mother nature’s indifference or other
trials that may afflict certain regions. But the basic formula
is time-tested, an equitable and efficient plan. Its resurrection
last year was celebrated by nearly every school
administrator in Kansas, as though an old and honorable
friend had come home again.
The wilder allegations ‒ of horrid tax increases, runaway
spending, rampant government intrusion and other
fear-mongering ‒ will come mostly from legislators whose
savage and destructive collusion with Brownback has been
exposed.
The moderates, though, will welcome the challenge and
opportunity to bring the state into recovery. They will see
positive change in meeting the Court’s challenge to refuel
funding for local schools.
They will see this as no spending spree. It is a Kansas
resurgence, a crucial step to offering a promise in education
to the next generations. It also marks another lesson
learned, a grievous mistake that we should hope never to
repeat.
‒ JOHN MARSHALL
